Clueless and "Conservative"

Before you fling epithets around, at least know what they mean.

Most of the disgusted comments following Kevin E. Lake's flimsy, ill-informed "expose" of the Wounded Warrior Project suggest that somehow "liberals" are to blame for the problem Lake purports to reveal. Why? No one seems to know, including the people doing the lamenting.

http://tipofthespearventures.com/wounded-warrior-project/

Lake's complaint is that the WWP is corrupt --as all charities are, in his view -- largely because they do not spend enough of their money on the wounded soldiers themselves but also because of some vague problem with non-disclosure agreements that I can't follow. He provides no numbers and no names for the anecdotes he uses for evidence. Nor does he offer a standard for what makes for legitimate charity work, perhaps because, in his view, we should all emulate him and just walk around handing money to veterans we know on an individual basis.

By most independent assessments, the WWP is pretty good, if not great, in its use of the money it receives. Every charity has to use some of its money for administrative costs and fundraising, and this one seems to balance these interests reasonably.

My issue, though, is with the bizarre discourse around Lake's weird little piece. 

Conservatives' biggest complaint is with excessive expenditure and empowerment in the federal government. They claim not to be heartless or greedy or self-centered, but to believe that freedom and self-sacrifice and community are best served in the private sector. These are not unreasonable positions to hold, and they are almost certainly correct in many instances.

Conservatives also tend to holler that liberals don't respect soldiers or the military.

OK, so the Wounded Warriors Project ought to be a conservative fan fave. And that's even if the CEO is paid millions of dollars to do his job. If the conservative point of view is correct, then the CEO deserves to be paid a lot of money for the service he provides in aggregating the donations of millions of people and distributing them to soldiers wounded or impaired by war. Government is nowhere to be found here, in part because the organization is not taxed, as a non-profit.

If the WWP is poorly run -- and there is no evidence in Lake's rant that it is -- then that has nothing to do with liberalism or conservativism. Nothing. 

Those who want to attack liberals, Democrats and Obama may have good reason, but they make themselves look like idiots when they fling around words without paying attention to what they mean, and thereby undermine the legitimate, serious dialogue we ought to be having.